KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After the nets were cut and the championship won, Iowa State senior Marial Shayok and freshman Talen Horton-Tucker embraced along the sideline of the Sprint Center floor. Shayok pulled Horton-Tucker close and whispered a long message in his ear, finally letting go and declaring, “Just got to be all there.”

Ten days before, the Cyclones weren’t all there. They weren’t even close to being everything they could be, going on the road and losing by 15 to West Virginia, the last-place team in the Big 12. The drama that played out behind closed doors spilled onto the court for the world to see when ESPN cameras caught junior forward Michael Jacobson barking at a pouting Horton-Tucker.

Two days before that, the Cyclones had lost Shayok to a left foot injury. The details are fuzzy, but there was a hard foul in practice, then a foot somehow meeting a locker room door. It allegedly was not a kick, but that doesn’t really matter. What did was...